Rupert Thomson - The Insult

On the way back to the hotel, I threw the rifle into the bushes. If we were broken into, I’d use a hammer to defend myself. A kitchen knife. The broom.

At seven-thirty the next morning I went into Kroner’s room and drew the curtains. He was awake. One eye clear and blinking, the other sloppy.

I put my face close to his. ‘You think that’s going to work, do you? You really think that’s going to work?’

His mouth fell sideways like an ice-cream melting. ‘Dssh —’

‘I suppose you were going to make his death look like an accident,’ I said, ‘or was it suicide you were thinking of?’

‘— Nnnnsshh — Nnnnsshh —’

I picked his glass up from the bedside table and held it above his face. I tilted it very slowly until the water trickled down the outside of the glass, off the end and down, in one thin stream, on to his forehead, into his eyes.

‘Now look what you made me do,’ I said.

He was moving his head from side to side. Some of the water had gathered in the worry lines. Interesting. Some of it had slid into his ears. I reached for a cloth and dabbed his face with it. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed.

‘I’m going to tell you something about accidents.’ I stared at the ceiling for a moment, as if I didn’t know quite where to begin. But I did, of course. I knew exactly. ‘You remember my brother and his wife? They had that terrible accident. The one where their truck went off the road and down that steep slope and they both died —’

He was making his usual soggy sounds. I could tell he was listening, though. His one good eye was fixed on me.

‘It wasn’t an accident at all,’ I said. ‘I killed them.’

I watched the eye move round in its socket, trying to escape. There was nowhere for it to go.

‘I borrowed one of my father’s hacksaws and cut through a track-rod. I only sawed into it a bit. I didn’t have much time, you see.’ I smiled to myself. ‘It’s the kind of thing that might not have worked. Not when I wanted it to, anyway.’ I paused again. ‘I was lucky, I suppose.’

I looked down at him once more.

‘Yes, that’s right, it was me,’ I said when I saw the look in his eye. ‘I did it.’

Outside, it was bright and cool. When I drove into the clearing with Mazey, my father was sitting on the back porch cleaning his rifle. This didn’t strike me as a coincidence at all. It was more like part of what had happened. The fever lifts. You return to normal. Something’s run its course. In daylight the idea of shooting Mazey seemed far-fetched and desperate, the light wind of someone else’s madness blowing through my head.

I said good morning to my father.

He looked up from his gun, his eyes pale, a crop of silver stubble on his cheeks and chin. ‘Any word of Karin?’

I shook my head. I reached into the back of the car and lifted a small battery-operated cassette machine off the seat. It was Kroner’s — he’d bought it just before his stroke; he liked new gadgets — but he would have no further use for it. I carried it across the yard and stood it on the bonnet of the truck. I asked Mazey for his tape. He handed it to me. I put it in the cassette machine, then I pressed the button that said PLAY. My father looked from me to Mazey and back again.

‘We have to chain him up,’ I said, ‘like before.’

This time my father’s eyes rested on Mazey for longer. Mazey didn’t notice. As usual, he was hypnotised by the cassette machine; he still hadn’t got used to the idea that you could hear the wind-chimes even though they were nowhere to be seen. My father studied him for a few moments, then looked down at the gun that lay across his lap.

‘You know where it is,’ he muttered.

I left Mazey in the yard while I walked into the barn. I found the padlocks and the chain on a shelf next to my father’s rack of tools. As I turned away, I noticed the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the corner, propped against the wall, unwanted now, and gathering dust. It seemed a pity he had never finished it. It could have been his masterpiece. I’d always looked forward to the day when doves were roosting in those little arches. Outside in the yard, I ran one end of the chain around Mazey’s ankle and fastened it with a padlock. Then I took the other end and hooked it through the truck’s front bumper. Mazey stood still the whole time, his eyes fixed on the cassette machine. The fact that he was being chained to the truck again made no impression on him. Somehow it would have been easier if he had kicked and screamed. I’d never forgotten that drive back from the institution when he was eight, and how eerily untouched he seemed, and how remote.

My father laid his rifle on a piece of cloth and, rising to his feet, walked slowly towards us. He touched Mazey on the shoulder. ‘Do you have your knife?’

Mazey nodded.

‘Show it to me.’

Mazey took the knife from his trouser pocket and held it out to my father on the flat of his hand. There was blood on the knife, and I knew what blood it was, but my father didn’t remark on it. He snapped one blade out, then the other. Tested both blades with the side of his thumb.

‘I thought so,’ he muttered. ‘Blunt.’

He turned on his heel and walked away from us. I watched him vanish into the darkness of the barn. We waited in the yard, Mazey and I, both facing in different directions. After a while I heard the rasp of a grindstone.

When my father stepped out into the sunlight, he was carrying two or three blocks of wood. He’d cleaned the blood off the knife, and the edges of the blades were bright silver, thinner than before. He handed the knife and the wood to Mazey.

‘Let’s see what you can do with those.’

I drank a glass of water in the kitchen. Out on the porch I said goodbye to my father. He nodded. The gun lay on the cloth in front of him, each piece ready to be oiled. It would be hours before he reassembled it. As I drove away, I saw Mazey in the rear-view mirror. He was sitting on the ground beside the truck, with his head bent, whittling.

All summer Mazey was kept chained to the truck outside my father’s house. All summer he carved the blocks of wood my father gave him. This time it was different, though. No strange, smooth shapes. Nothing you had to puzzle over, or guess at.

All summer he carved babies.

Babies sitting up, babies lying down. Babies on their backs or on their stomachs. Babies sleeping, laughing, kicking, crying (he even carved the tears). My father tried to persuade him to turn his hand to something else, but he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. Each new block of wood that he was given became another baby, as if that was the only shape the wood contained, as if that was all it could ever be.

One morning in August I sat beside him. I remember counting them. There were thirty-seven — some life-size, others no bigger than your thumb. He put down his knife and picked up a block of wood that was as yet untouched. He held it in the palm of one hand and placed his other hand on top of it, and then he looked at me.

‘Baby,’ he said. ‘In here.’

Many years later, on a warm September morning, a letter arrived. I turned it over in my hands, examined the writing on the envelope. I didn’t recognise it. The postmark was a city in the northwest; I didn’t know anyone who lived there. When I tore the letter open, a photograph fell out and landed on the floor. I bent down, picked it up. There were two people in the picture, a man and a girl. I didn’t recognise either of them. I looked at the envelope again to make sure it was addressed to me. There my name was, on the front. I took the picture out to the porch and stood in the sunlight, studying it. The girl was embracing the man, her right arm passing across his chest, her two hands joining on his left shoulder. Now I thought about it, she looked something like my daughter, Karin. I’d only seen Karin once since she left. It was Kroner she came for — which was just as well because he died a few weeks afterwards. She stayed for less than an hour. She was rude. I turned my attention to the man again and suddenly everything fell into place. It was Jan Salenko, twenty years on. He’d thickened, the way men do, but there was the same strangely grateful look to him, as if he didn’t deserve to be in the picture. My eyes drifted back to the girl. I thought of that cold December night and the baby I’d delivered. I’d even named her. Nina.